Life in the borderland

November 29, 2007

Why consider a different educational program than the one that your neighbors are talking about and that you have known of since your now middle-schooler was in Kinder garden? Why step aside from what is known and tried? Because what is known today did not even exist 20 years ago and what we know today will be replaced in the next decade. We live in rapidly changing times driven by enormous amounts of new information. Pause for a moment to inspect that last statement. It is the unique duality of both rapid changes and huge amounts of information that make this an era like none other. So staggering is this combination that the knowledge acquired by a college student majoring in a technological field will be outdated by the time she is in her junior year. Add to that the fact that the US Department of Labor expects today’s children to hold between 10-14 jobs; all by the time they are only 38 years old. Half of the working population today works for a company they did not work for 5 years ago. Enormous amounts of information that is easily accessible in an age of rapid change beckons us to consider that knowing how to handle the information is more important than knowing all the information yourself. This is just the beginning of why we might want to consider a different educational approach for our children.

Information is not the only commodity in abundance. We live in a society and a time of abundance in which most all commodities are available in abundance. Stephen Covey speaks of the 8th habit to add to his list of 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. He cites the fact that of 23,000 working people, only about half were satisfied with what they had done in a week of work. So, while information and other commodities are available in abundance, satisfaction and happiness are not. Covey’s 8th habit is about finding your inner voice, your life’s calling. In an environment of abundance, external gimmicks are less and less likely to fulfill us. In this age, as Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind cites, we need to be searching for Meaning. Meaning and fulfillment, two words describing the same inner voice come from knowing ourselves and relying on our inner beings to be happy. Must we wait to be grown and working adults to find this voice or can be inculcated at an early stage in life? At PSCS, we believe that self-awareness comes hand in hand with the growing self.

The availability of information where we want it and when we want it is making the world a smaller place. Today’s children will have to interact with others from around the globe. In keeping with this, developing ‘Global citizens’ is the hype in modern education. What does this really mean? At its very core, being global implies being able to relate to people of all backgrounds. It is diversity in its deepest sense. The ability to connect with all people comes from starting to relate, to yourself and your immediate community before expanding out to the larger community of the globe. This can only come from being immersed in a community in which learning happens from having to balance personal needs with those of the rest of the community, where freedom, responsibility and the choices you make have real implications to those beyond yourself and that you need to factor in.

In these changing times several experts have spoken on the need for new kinds of minds and the development of new skills. The aforementioned Daniel Pink, speaks of right-brain skills being first among equals with left-brain skills. He calls attention to Design, Symphony, Play, Story, Empathy and Meaning as the critical right-brain skills of the future. In the same vain, acclaimed education psychologist, Howard Gardner speaks of the Five Minds Of The Future in his new book. According to Gardner, the Disciplined Mind, the Synthesizing Mind, the Creating Mind, the Respectful Mind and the Ethical Mind are the ones to reckon with.

In my work at the Puget Sound Community School, we have synthesized the work of these and other experts along with data on the society of the future to create a pioneering middle school program. The program will launch in Fall 2008. If this intrigues you in any way, respond with a comment to this post and I will get in touch with you.

May 15, 2007

my dad is visiting from india, to spend time with me and help with the redesign of our home. it has been delightful to have him be so engaged in what is going on with me .. whether trying to understand what i am preparing for school, or what i do around the house or what i want with the new design of our home. he has always been one to take keen interest in what i have done, often, when he did not even agree with what i was doing. i hope i can do the same for the little one growing in me.

March 04, 2007

The students at PSCS keep me smiling in many ways. Often it is because they are being truly who they are and often that comes in the form of them following their passions. Here's a story from this week along those lines.

In the summer of 2005, I was sitting on the admissions committee, interviewing a purple-haird, boyish faced 15 year old whose sister had graduated from PSCS. Kent, who came to PSCS for the year 2005-06 became quite the presence at PSCS. Ever jovial, never afraid to speak, walking the talk of PSCS, he instantly became a leader and a much loved student. Mid-way through the year he declared his lifelong dream - to be a chef! What's more he said he wasn't going to wait around to make that happen for himself. So, he looked into culinary art schools around the country and found the Western Culinary Arts School in Portland, based on Cordon Bleu in France. He then pursued their application procedure and before the year was out, was accepted as the youngest ever applicant.

Kent is completing a year at Culinary Art School now and recently started looking around for an internship. What better way to do that than to return to Seattle for the summer and what could be better than interning at Canlis (top 10 restaurant in Seattle and #19 in the US)? So, Kent applied to Canlis. When he showed up for his interview, the chef asked him how long he could stay, to which, Kent, true to his style responded with something close to, "I will be here until you ask me to leave". He worked the shift starting early afternoon that day well into the night, finishing at 1 am. This was followed by an interview with the chef and sous chef, and that, with the acceptance to be working as an intern at Canlis this summer. I wonder if he is the youngest intern Canlis has ever had?!

Kent's story symbolises in many ways, what we believe naturally happens when children are loved, motivated, inspired and challenged in a caring environment. They tend to come in touch with their inner selves, from which arises the act of walking a path of courage, conviction and dedication, towards their biggest dreams. The usual norms of society that factor in age, diplomas and other constraints, fall by the wayside for such youth. They are after their dreams and nobody can stop them.

And, the stories that come from this not that unbelievable. Afterall, isn't the richest man in the world a Harvard drop out?

February 18, 2007

The possibilities that PSCS makes real continue to amaze me. This past week, we paused our 'regular' schedule and have each staff member focus on a single topic with a group of interested students. One of the topics that emerged was "Movies -- watching them for the whole week". I twisted that to be "Teach Anoo American Through Movies". And, so began the process of picking out the movies. My only restriction was that they couldn't contain gore or violence. Several students contributed to the process -- hey, who was going to give up the chance to tell Anoo what she should watch? Here is the final set, embelished with my comments, that we ended up watching:

Breakfast Club: I thought this was a very cleverly done movie. I walked away getting a real feel for the life of an american teenager in the 1980s presented through an unusual setting.

Donnie Darko: When we first watching this movie on Monday, I felt it was good. As the week wore on, I felt less excited about it -- I could do without the bizarreness of it.

Jesus Camp: Now, here's a must watch! This documentary represents a real, and, the very scary might I add, reality of Jesus Camps held by a group of Pentecostal Christians for their young children.

Benny and Joon: This is exactly the kind of movie I would like and I did! It is so sweet, and, real in so many ways to how I like to look at the world. Of course, the fact that it had Johnny Depp in it, helped.

Cry Baby: Yeah, I know this is one of those 'oh my god, American movies' but I could have done without it, even though it had Johnny Depp in it. I am just not into 1950s musicals that are overly dramatic.

Clerks: The plotless, real nature of this movie, grabbed me. Besides, there aren't many things more American than convenience stores, wouldn't you say?

Rebel Without A Cause: I am glad I watched this classic, but I don't think my life would have been incomplete without it. James Dean did not exactly do it for me.

Edward Scissorhands: I really appreciated the 1950s suburban representation in this Johnny Depp bonanza. I found many subtle and important messages conveyed -- the struggle for acceptance that is true for all "not normal" people and the conforming nature of suburban living.

February 06, 2007

"Teachers observe children’s play and listen carefully to children’s questions so they may support emergent projects and creations that come directly from the children instead of the teachers. In small group work teams and large group free choice activities, teachers provide invitations to the children on topics they express interest in.", that is what the Learning model at Hilltop Children's Center in Seattle is all about. In so many ways, it is exactly like PSCS. I have had the pleasure of visiting Hilltop twice now, spending time with the children and having discussions with a teacher who has taught there for 20 years. Based on the Reggio Emilia schools in Italy, Hilltop provides a very supportive environment for children to follow their natural curiosity and passions.

In my second visit this week, some things were very stark. Children are not rushed from activity to activity, when they play, they play for 2-3 hours at a time, allowing them enough time to start/create a game, alter it, have others join them, run into conflicts sometimes, resolve conflicts on their own, re-create the game and so on. The tremendous number of learning opportunities in what seems like a simple cycle of play are many -- for one there is the chance to create something, imaginative play, of socializing while playing, of dealing with conflict and learning to resolve it, of adjusting based on changing conditions, desires and ideas, of having the freedom to really explore something, of staying focused on one basic activity for a long period. Don't these just sound like basic skills that any grown human to eventually have? And, they are coming about in the space of extended play time, experienced by 3-5 year olds.

Another thing that stood out to me was that there was no adult-child conflict. There was just no power play or control being exercised by adults. When adults wanted children to do something, they gently suggested it. Most often the children just accepted the request. This also happened vice versa. It was so refreshing to not hear the words, "I need you to do ...", a term used so often by teachers. Instead, teachers walked up to the children and said, "your blocks are on the floor and we are going to go out to play in a few minutes". The child then inferred what they needed to do next. How about that? Not having to exercise authority, demand action and face resistance when doing so!

This week, I also got to watch a video of one of the original Reggio Emilia schools. In this one, 4-6 year olds were focused on a project about the lion. It was inspired by the stone statue of a lion outside the town church. The children explored the lion in every which way -- by climbing on it, measuring it with a tape, making molds of it's body parts, doing shadow drawings, then creating their own shadow theater, making sketches, creating clay sculptures (yes, 5 year olds created fantastic clay sculptures), painting, making costumes, having puppet shows, all lasting 40 days (I don't know if this happened day after day every day, I imagine not though). How fabulous? Instead of looking through a book of pictures and having the teacher talk about lions, explore and 'feel' them in every which way possible! Imagine the questions and varied aspects of lions that the children might have come across in this process.

I get to return to Hilltop one more time. This time, PSCS students will read children's story books that they themeselves, wrote, created and illustrated to 3-5 year olds. I cannot wait to experience it!

January 27, 2007

For a long while now, I have dreamt of living in a sustainable manner -- a green home that generates it's own electricity, rain water collection, ventilation driven cooling, natural materials used for construction, composting, growing my own vegetables, buying organic, supporting local businesses, using green transport, on and on. While, several parts of life are driven by more sustainable choices, I certainly don't live in a green home. However, the quest is on.

In my search, I came across Sustainable Ballard, a local organization trying to turn the Seattle, Ballard neighborhood into a sustainable one, making it a blueprint for every other neighborhood in the US. I started wondering how I could become a part of this organization, meet other like-minded people, transform my lifestyle and start teaching about sustainability to the youth at PSCS. I spent most of the summer tossing around emails, nothing really coming of it all. However, I believe that when you put energy into something you believe in, it will begin to manifest. And, so it has. In December, I met with a group of parents and other folks interested in sustainability education in schools to talk about creating a sustainability curriculum. We meet on a monthly basis, however a smaller group, including myself, a very enthusiastic parent and one of my students, are meeting every week to dig deep into developing the curriculum.

I am excited -- it means I will learn more about a way of living that is important to me and what's more I get to do it with a student of mine, in the process of developing something that hopefully many will learn from.

November 20, 2005

I am in Bangalore now. I came here primarily to visit with some alternative schools. Having taught at an alternative school in the US, I have been intrigued to know about alternative education in India. Given that Indian culture tends to be conservative, I have been skeptical of alternative education in India. To my surprise, I am learning that alternative approaches are rapidly increasing in India. The effort is coming from educationists and social workers that have a background in Indian philosophy and a sense of desperation around the poor quality of modern Indian education. By most standards, modern Indian education is no different from modern education in any other part of the world. That is the problem.

Today, I visited Vikasana. The school was closed so I wanted to take the opportunity to meet with the founder before I see the school in session tomorrow. Malati (or Malati akka, roughly translated to older sister Malati, as most people call her) is the heart and soul of Vikasana. Malati started Vikasana over 25 years ago. She was a student of David Horsburg, a pioneer in alternative education. It was David’s wish that his students would go on to start schools based on his approach. Malati did just that.

Vikasana is a school for poor children of local farmers. Today the school has 40 children between the ages of 3-16. They come to school before 9 am and leave after 5 pm. Some of the children walk as many as 5 miles one way to get to the school. They learn in groups of similar aged children, each group led by one teacher. The school has 4 teachers other than Malati and so there are 4 groups. The education is free and the school relies on donations from organizations like Asha. The children are required to bring their own writing books, pencils and a lunch.

The curriculum taught is open and flexible. It is academically oriented but the approach is unique. As Malati says, the goal is to expose children to the knowledge that exists in the world but to do it in a way that makes it relevant to them. There is no point in teaching a child to do addition if she doesn’t know how addition is useful and relevant to her. Further, the idea is to help children develop their own learning capacity and style with the material being taught serving only to spark their inner learning approach.

All of this seems to be possible because of who Malati is and the kind of space Vikasana is located in. Malati is energetic, very intelligent and tuned into understanding the workings of her own thought processes especially the tricky nature of the human ego. She is simple, open and full of love. She seems to believe that love alone can teach. Her years of dedication and work at Vikasana are testimony to this. Vikasana started in a single cottage-like structure that Malati, David Horsburg and the students built. They added another structure that serves as Malati’s home. The structures are made from local fire-kilned clay bricks, finished with soil from ant hills and cow dung. The roofs are made with clay tiles. They look like single room cottages. They are small (about 12x10 feet) using only as much land as needed, thus leaving the natural vegetation around intact. About 5 structures exist now, several of which have been built by the students themselves. One structure is particularly unique – is a short dome – about 6 feet high and 8 feet in diameter, built from mud and bricks. It was built as part of an experiment for the children to learn how to build a dome using the least amount of money possible. They got Rs. 260 ($5) for it. The completed structure has been in place for 8 years now. The outside is decorated by the children using stones, glass pieces and waste materials. Today, the inside is used by the children to eat their lunch (on a rainy day) and play. All of the school cottages are cleaned and maintained by the students. I was curious how willing the students are about cleaning. Malati told me that they cannot seem to wait to clean, especially on Fridays when they do their big weekly clean up. That seems unbelievable to me. Malati says that it seems to happen that way because that is just what they do at that time on Friday and everyone does it, including her. She also says that the students appreciate returning on Monday to a clean classroom. It is my guess that it also works because each student group has a cottage for their use. They must feel a sense of belonging to that space.

The space between structures is filled with local vegetation and place for animals. Dogs, cats, monkeys and at one point rabbits and tortoises inhabited. The grounds also house a water well and a tall ant hill. Malati has worked hard to leave the space as she found it and to let nature take its course.

I spent about 2 hours with Malati. We talked on the philosophy of education, in particular what she does at Vikasana. She showed me the space and told me of the children. Tomorrow, I will return to see the school in session. As you might guess, I just cannot wait …

July 04, 2005

I completed a whole year of teaching. It was everything I wanted it to be and more. I started teaching with the goal of wanting to learn – the whole space, environment and process of teaching is one that makes me focus on learning in a way that I don’t think anything else can. I have learnt about myself as a person, about American culture, about teenagers, about teaching and above all about bringing about the life I want. Below are some things that have stood out. I cannot imagine that these are great ahas for the world to learn about – they are however great ahas for me --

Teenagers learn the most from themselves and other teenagers. They learn from adults too but that doesn’t seem to be the major way in which they learn. This also applies to behavioral role modeling.

I have taught more by asking open-ended questions than by providing answers.

More than adults, children know exactly when you are being sincere and when you are not. They can see this in you even when you cannot see it in yourself.

Children forgive more easily than adults. Even when they know you are being insincere, they will give you another chance in more situations than most adults will.

Honesty really is the best policy – even when you think you know better than not to be honest. Really! Never follow any other policy with children.

May 29, 2005

I have often mused over the contrast of how I spent my childhood playing on the street outside Ushus v/s how my students' spend their evenings in front of an Xbox or watching some sitcom. I have sometimes relayed to them how I spent my childhood. For a while I even felt strongly about how they "ought" to spend their time. I think one naturally goes into that mode .. we all have opinions and judgements of how best to spend our time .. it all stems from our ever-subtle values. No matter what we say, we have them.

Something seems to have caused an ever-so-little shift in this perspective of mine. It happened during the course of a really honest conversation with one student (Jostin). He spends a lot of time on his computer -- playing, emailing, IMing but even beyond that, running his own business. He and another student (Adrian) started creating web pages for themselves about 2 years ago. They got so interested in making web pages that after a while they floated a company to make web pages for other people. After that, they started getting requests from punk rock bands to make web pages for them. They did that and soon after found themselves signing up bands and releasing their records. At this point, they have released and promoted several bands some of who have been on the top 10 list of punk rock music. Its quite something to watch these 2 students running their own business, paying taxes, meeting with lawyers and so on. Its all not conventional, not in keeping with what most 16-17 year olds do.

You can well imagine what changes this has caused in them as growing young adults. It has also affected their commitment to school -- how can one be interested in focusing on school when you have a budding business to run? To me its been very simple to see that the boys need support and encouragement in what they are doing. They are however enrolled at school and the school is asking them to spend more time at school if they want to continue at school. The conversations have been tense and not the greatest. So, I decided to take Jostin aside and have an honest conversation about what he wants, whether he really wants to be at school and if so why. All his behavior seemed to indicate that he didn’t want to be at school and I completely understand why so I wanted to see if he could accept that he may not want to be at school and in reality, just wants to run his business. The conversation was real .. I think some of it was because I had no judgements about how Jostin should spend his time .. I wanted to merely reflect back to him what his behavior seemed like and to help him get in touch with what he really wants. During the course of the conversation he made some honest confessions about why school sucks .. all very real feelings that we have all felt at some point. At the same time, he also said he never wants to not be at school -- this school is his family and he longs to be there because he knows he is cared for in this school. He also expressed all the excitement that he feels in running his business .. how he cannot stop doing it once he starts. How he can stay up nights and not be done. How he forgets to eat when he is working and so on. That made me stop .. I recalled how I didn’t feel hungry when I was playing on the street outside our apartment in Bombay. My mom would call for me every 10 mins to get me back home for dinner. I recalled how I could not sleep at night, restless to wake up next morning so I could take all my friends for a long walk on juhu beach. Were Jostin's emotions and what he was experiencing really any different from what I had experienced as a child? Sure, we had chosen different activities but at the very base layer we didn’t seem to be any different ...

That conversation has opened my eyes to the fact that what today's children DO doesn’t really matter, they are feeling the same things we did and how they grow from those feelings, what they learn of themselves is what I need to focus on. I am not sure if you were saying any different from what I have said. I think you were merely citing the contrast, not making a judgement. I just felt like sharing how I held a judgement about the choices that today's children are making and how my judgement has been diffused by this experience.

April 11, 2005

I havent written for a while. I havent found the quiet time to pen down my thoughts. My inability to find that quiet time has caused many things to happen lately. The most important of which has been my inability to step back, pause and just observe what is going on at the school. I have felt many frustrations in the past months, which could have been avoided/helped by some quiet observation.

We have experienced a serious lack of discipline at the school and have struggled in dealing with it. The symptoms came as follows -- students not coming to school on time, leaving early without providing an explanation, spending a lot of time outside of campus during school hours, not doing homework, skipping classes. Personally, I struggled to try and determine what was going on. In an environment without consequences and students having complete freedom it is not possible to enforce discipline. Nor do we want to. But that makes day to day functioning hard.

At one point, I had an insight -- I felt that at some level the students were not feeling safe and didn’t trust the school environment. I didn’t however pursue my insight to any level. Now that I think about it again, I do really think that we may have an environment in which students just don’t care and people generally don’t care when they don’t have a feeling of belonging. A feeling of belonging comes about when one feels connected and together with others. And, we come together when we feel safe.

So, now I am looking at what makes people feel safe. We are all essentially insecure and so can never feel safe if we keep searching for things to make us safe. Someone once said to me -- "You are most secure when you realize you can never be secure". So, I think we feel safe when we are open -- open to everything around us and open to learning. That (and many in between steps that are really hard to express in words) have in turn made me ask what I think "discipline" is. My one sentence definition is -- "Discipline is the commitment to being sensitive (open?) to everything within and around you". I will leave you to discern that for yourself (or start a dialog with me about it). The key to bringing about discipline is to create a safe environment in which everyone is invested in feeling safe.